Ancient news stories

A team of researchers has found evidence that shows the Khufu branch of the Nile River once ran so close to Giza that it could have been used to carry the stones that were used to build the famous pyramids.

Palaeontologists at Adelaide’s Flinders University have used cutting edge micro-CT scanning and 3D printing technology to look inside a 100-million-year-old dinosaur fossil. But this was no ordinary fossil.

Archaeologists in Romania have discovered an extraordinary cache of ancient gold rings that a 6,500-year-old woman wore in her hair.

Three skeletons uncovered in a rock shelter adorned with red pigment rock art reveal burial rituals of early humans who followed well-trodden paths through Indonesia’s Lesser Sunda Islands, albeit thousands of years apart.

In a trio of papers published simultaneously in the journal, Science reports a massive effort of genome-wide sequencing from 727 distinct ancient individuals with which it was possible to test longstanding archaeological, genetic and linguistic hypotheses.

The switch to walking on two legs instead of four is a major moment in the evolution of our species, which is why scientists are keen to pinpoint exactly when it happened – and a new study puts the adaptation as happening around 7 million years ago.

Radiocarbon analysis of the material suggests that the mounds were built over thousands of years, with construction of Mound B starting around 11,000 years ago.

Researchers looked at the impact of climate on 17-million-year-old tooth fossils.

It is believed to be the Welsh Atlantis, a lost land lying below the water at Cardigan Bay. For at least 800 years, tales have been told of the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod, but evidence that it really existed has been scant.

An extraordinary megaflood occurred 5 million years ago as the Mediterranean rose 10 metres a day!

Archaeologists say the prehistoric site in Huelva province could be one of the largest of its kind in Europe.

Tiny fragments of rock brought back from an asteroid in near-Earth solar orbit are so old, they predate the Solar System.

The rock crystals were likely brought to the site from a source more than 80 miles (130 kilometers) away, over mountainous terrain, and the crystals appear to have been carefully broken into much smaller pieces, possibly during a community gathering to watch the working of what must have seemed like a magical material

A new study of a meteorite that landed on Earth reveals how this asteroid activity occurs. Small collisions can dislodge the pebbles, which shoot off the asteroid but fall back, drawn in by the space rock’s gravitational pull.

A team of archaeologists uncovered the Neolithic-era remains using laser scanning, aerial photography, drones, and various forms of surveying. The scientists located the settlement at Al-Faw, an archaeological site that has previously turned up evidence of a strong trade network that sustained an ancient city.

Footprints laid down by Ice Age hunter-gatherers and recently discovered in a US desert are shedding new light on North America’s earliest human inhabitants.